Amash Reminds McCain of Libya

Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), a Republican with libertarian leanings who has been a vocal critic of military intervention abroad, criticized Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Monday by re-tweeting McCain’s tweet from 2009 about Libya and former dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

In that tweet from August of 2009, McCain tweeted, “Late evening with Col. Qadhafi at his ‘ranch’ in Libya – interesting meeting with an interesting man.”

advertisement

Late evening with Col. Qadhafi at his “ranch” in Libya – interesting meeting with an interesting man.

McCain has been a proponent of intervention in Syria, which has been compared “to Libya, where the U.S. conducted limited air strikes without congressional authorization, and Gaddafi was captured and killed by rebels.”

Amash also “tweeted that after hearing from about 400 constituents Tuesday, 95 percent were against action in Syria,” and told Michigan outlet mlive.com that the American people are not “ready to go to war based on circumstantial evidence.”

“The case for going to war is not that strong,” he said. “The issue has to remain whether this is in the interests of the United States to get involved. If we go there, are we going to cause more bloodshed or less? That’s not clear to me.”